“ON June 22, Poland opposed all the other EU countries to block the conclusions of the EU environmental ministers council. Were it not for Poland’s opposition, the council would have adopted stricter carbon emission targets, endorsing the commission’s 2050 Roadmap calling for a 40 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2030, a 60 percent cut by 2040 and a 80 percent cut by 2050, compared to 1990 levels.
“Just days before, Brussels audiences were shocked to hear a statement from the EU budget commissioner, Poland’s Janusz Lewandowski, who declared to national media: ‘We already have overambitious agreements on CO2 emission reduction. There is a notion that the thesis that coal energy is the main cause of global warming is highly questionable. Moreover, more and more often there is a question mark put over the whole [issue of] global warming as such.’
“Such reactions were not unpredictable for Poles: inside the largest of the new member states, scepticism towards climate change science and defiance of the EU climate and energy package has predominated in governmental and mainstream media discourses for months…
Read more here: http://euobserver.com/9/32570
Coal-friendly Poland: a bad climate leader for the EU by Kuba Gogolewski, June 30, 2011
Via Benny Peiser
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.